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Or will there be many such organizations dealing with different classes of
contract? Will there be a Woman's League to boycott any man who has
abused the confidence of a woman and violated his pledges? How will it
try and sanction cases of breach of promise?

Above all, how is this powerful Company for the defence of the country
against foreign invaders to be constituted? And what safeguards will its
members provide against the tyranny of the officials? When a Senator
proposed to limit the standing army of the United States to three
thousand, George Washington agreed, on condition that the honorable member
would arrange that the country should never be invaded by more than two
thousand. Frankenstein created a Monster he could not lay. This will
be a nut for Anarchists of the future to crack.

And now, to revert to the Vigilance Society formed for lynching persons
who travel about in public places with small-pox and scarletina, what
rules will they make for their own guidance? Suppose they dub every
unvaccinated person a "focus of infection," shall we witness the
establishment of an Anti- Vigilance Society to punch the heads of the detectives
who punch the heads of the "foci of infection"? Remember, we have
both these societies in full working order to-day. One is called the State,
and the other is the Anti- Vaccination Society.

1. How far may voluntary co-operators invade the liberty of others?
And what is to prevent such invasion under a system of Anarchy?

2. Is compulsory co-operation ever desirable? And what form (if any)
should such compulsion take?

The existing State is obviously only a conglomeration of several large
societies which would exist separately or collectively in its absence; if the
State were abolished, these associations would necessarily spring up out of
its ruins, just as the nations of Europe sprang out of the ruins of the
Roman Empire. They would apparently lack the power of compulsion. No
one would be compelled to join against his will. Take the ordinary case
of a gas-lit street. Would a voluntary gas-committee be willing to light the
street without somehow taxing all the dwellers in the street? If yes, then
there is inequity. The generous and public-spirited pay for the stingy and
mean. But if no, then how is the taxing to be accomplished? And where
is the line to he drawn? If you compel A to pay for lighting the street
when he swears he prefers it dark (a householder may really prefer a dark
street to a light one, if he goes to bed at sunset and wants the traffic to be
diverted into other streets to insure his peace); then you will compel him
to subscribe to the Watch fund, though his house is burglar-proof; and to
the fire brigade, though his house is fire-proof; and to the prisons as part
of the plant and tools of the Watch Committee; and, it may logically be
urged, to the churches and schools as part also of such plant and tools
for the prevention of certain crimes.

Moreover, if you compel him to subscribe for the gas in the street, you
must make him pay his share of the street itself (paving, repairing, and
cleansing); and if the street, then the highway; and if the highway, then
the railway, and the canal, and the bridges, and even the harbors and
lighthouses and other common apparatus of transport and locomotion.

Personally, as an individualist, I would not compel a citizen to subscribe
to common benefits, even though he necessarily shares them. But what I
want the four lights of Anarchy above-named to tell me is: How are we